Saturday, November 15, 2008

Here's my first blog for this site, it's going to be neat starting one up finally. Since poker is such a large part of my life currently, I won't be able to help but talk about some poker-related aspects of my life, but rest assured, this blog is not about poker. It will contain little to no poker specific topics. To see poker related topics (like hand analysis, tournament reports, how I'm running, etc.), it'd be better to go to my Rebels of Poker blog (http://rebelsofpoker.com/forums/index.php?autocom=blog&blogid=11&). This blog will be about my musings, sometimes planned, but oftentimes random. Let's see if this works.

So for those of you who don't know me, I'm 22 (about to turn 23 in 1.5 weeks), and I just graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Biology and minor in Psychology this past May. I intended to pursue medical studies right after college, but now those plans have been put on hold indefinitely. Although I was really studious in high school, I found out in college that studying for life was not something I was prepared to get into, no matter what the perks eventually may be. Plus, my successful involvement in poker just slowly swayed me away; it was simply inevitable. I consider myself fantastically lucky that I have been able to find this niche for myself at this age; traveling the world and not worrying about income is something that I never, ever take for granted. It is astounding how much I love traveling- in less than 2 years, I have taken 63 flights, flown over 155,000 miles, and visited 15 different countries on 5 continents (yes I log this, it's how much I love flying), with roundtrip flights to San Francisco and Sydney still to come before the year is out. Along the way, I have made some potential lifelong friends, those who really share my interests and the sort of lifestyle I am living right now.

With all that said, I think the traveling and pokering part of my life will extend indefinitely in the short-term, I'd say for the next 1-3 years. I'll have my sights set on trying to build on the capital I have now while enjoying the amazing wonders of the world at my age, without being strapped down in a family setting (although this is what I crave for a later point in my life). When that time comes, then I won't have the freedom to, say, fly to San Francisco 3 days from now for a week, which is exactly what I'm doing. I don't even know when I'm coming back before flying to Sydney for a tournament in December. And I love it.

Since I copied-pasted the text I just wrote for my other poker blog, but decided to write all-new stuff instead (all the stuff above), I won't waste what I wrote and I'll talk about the last couple months of my traveling, which were simply sick. So I went to a tournament in New Zealand in October and promptly busted that. Afterwards, my friend and I went to town all over New Zealand. We rented a car and just drove south away from Auckland and basically explored half of the North Island of NZ. It was the most amazing trip I have taken, with the amazing scenery and adrenaline rush activities they have there. To name a few- rolling around in a water ball James Bond-esque down a hill, reverse bungy launch at night, abseiling down into a cave 100m below a platform and making way up-current against a raging river in 100% darkness (helmet lights included), walking around the outer ring of the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere (Auckland’s SkyTower) and then jumping off of it.. twice. Oh, and we saw Mount “Doom” too, the raging volcano in the Lord of the Rings movies. Too bad it didn’t erupt while we were there.

After NZ, I flew back to Hong Kong and spent a week there with family before flying back to Virginia for about a week to spend some time at home. Then it was off to Costa Rica for another tournament and meeting up with friends. I only made it through about 4 levels before busting, nothing I could have done in the hand I went out on. After the tournament was over, I was able to meet a bunch of people, including people I play with all the time online, which was really cool. I'll say over and over again that one of the main perks of these trips is that you really meet a lot of cool people and poker contacts. My really good friend and her husband, who works for the poker site I play at, took me out to her beach house in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. There we went ziplining, whitewater rafting nearby, and jetskiing, the 2nd love of my life (poker is my 1st love, obv). Along the way, I accumulated mega mosquito bites, but it was all worth it. Thanks Mel and T!

So now I’ve just gotten back to my house in VA for a few days. I've just been playing some poker at home, since there's nothing much to do here. I had the biggest online win of my career in a tournament, and I was just randomly playing it for more experience, so that was awesome. A few more days in VA, and I will be flying (again) to San Francisco with Paresh where we will spend a week at least. From there, I'm not sure if I'll fly back to VA before flying to Sydney in early December, or if I will just book a ticket from SF.

Guess that's it for now, this post will probably be the longest one I make ever just cause it was a first post and I wanted to get a lot in. Till next time, whenever that may be.